Last Tango In Pape'ete
by JA Baker
Summary: A Jaeger pilot contemplates his final battle during the tenth year of the Kaiju War


_It's all owned by someone else, someone not me  
__Extended authors note at the end; please read fully before posting reviews  
__With thanks to Marcus "StonedCoyote" Moazzam for Beta Reading._

**Last Tango In Pape'ete**

August in the South Pacific. Back in Ireland it was the end of a long, hot summer, but down here winter was just starting to ebb into spring, with Cyclones prowling the ocean. But we weren't out there looking for any storm, at least not one of wind and rain.

A Kaiju, a big bastard of a category IV they'd named _Snapjaw_, had emerged from the Breach and immediately headed south-east. Lima and Sydney Shatterdomes were immediately put on full alert, as well as Panama City and Los Angeles, just in case it turned north. After a couple of hours it became clear it was headed somewhere in the vicinity of French Polynesia. That meant the beast became the responsibility of the Sydney strike-force. While the tourist industry had effectively collapsed ten years previously, thanks in no small part to the giant monsters that had come erupting out of the depths, the islands still hosted a sizeable population and France had the political clout to make sure the Pan Pacific Defense Corps acted. Sydney housed six operational Jaegers, but _Striker Eureka_, _Echo Saber_ and _Vulcan Specter_ were on down-time for maintenance and crew rest, leaving it up to _Rhapsody Red_, _Centurion Maximus_ and _Titan Avenger_ to take the field. Two obsolete Mark-3's and a single Mark-4, tasked with defending over four thousand square kilometres and a quarter of a million people.

Some people asked why we still deployed Jaeger strike groups against Kaijus headed for such sparsely populated areas, why we risked irreplaceable multi-billion dollar machines and their highly-trained and equally irreplaceable pilots for so little reward. I don't think they fully understand what it is that drives the Pan Pacific Defense Corps and its Rangers. We don't assign a price tag to anything in a Kaiju's path. We are the ultimate Thin Red Line, Humanity's only defence against the Kaiju short of nuclear weapons. The day we decide that one group of people is worth defending, while another isn't, is the day we stop being worth defending as a species.

I could feel the Jaeger swaying below me, buffeted by the wind as the _Jumphawks_ carried us towards our drop-zone. Across the Drift, I could feel Amélie, my co-pilot, tense up. It was our first combat drop together in _Rhapsody Red_, but she was as nervous as the first time we Drifted back at the academy on Kodiak Island.

Everyone remembers where they were on K-Day, when _Trespasser_ emerged from San Francisco Bay and proceeded to rip the city a new one. Me? I was in bed, about 5,000 miles away in Dublin. I was 18 and still living at home, while I studied Preliminary Engineering at Coláiste Dhúlaigh College. My dad came home early from work and woke the entire house, dragging us all out of bed to watch it all unfold on the TV. I asked him why and he said it was history in the making. I'll admit, I didn't believe him, not until _Hundun_ attacked Manila and _Kaiceph_ stomped all over Cabo. By the time _Scissure_ hit Sydney, I think I had a better understanding of what it meant.

Years later, my father told me it was like watching the fall of the Berlin Wall or 9/11...something you don't fully comprehend at the time, but you still know that the world is never going to be the same again. There was a lot of fear back then that Kaiju would appear elsewhere in the world and Ireland found itself woefully under-armed to protect her coastline. We looked to Britain for assistance, but they were panicking themselves at the thought of a Kaiju striding up the Thames and laying waste to London. Downing Street could offer little more than a promise that they would _try_ to help, if and when we were attacked.

The situation got a little better, once the Breach was located and it was confirmed that there weren't any others, ready to spew forth more Kaiju all over the world. By then they'd started work on what would become the Jaeger project and I remember watching the live news feeds of _Brawler Yukon_ taking down _Karloff_ in the middle of Vancouver.

I knew right then and there that I wanted...no, needed to become a Ranger.

Yeah, me and about half the world's population as it turned out. There were so many applications for the PPDC in the week that followed Vancouver, that I heard they had to turn to MIT just to keep the servers running. Most were too young, too old, or otherwise unfit and rejected immediately. I will admit, I was actually a little shocked when I made it through to Phase Two of the selection process. I spent several days at the assessment centre, working through test papers, solving logic puzzles and having my reaction times tested against the exacting standards they set...typically you had to score in the top 5-10% to achieve a pass. We were never told how we were progressing. You only knew you hadn't made the grade when you were called to the Commander's office, thanked for your time and told to pack your stuff in time for the next bus into town.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I was asked to attend an interview and evaluation in London. I hadn't told my family that I was even considering joining the PPDC...even if I had, I doubt they would have taken me seriously. They saw it as some kind of childish adventure, something I had to get out of my system, before I got onto the serious business of growing up and working out what I wanted to do with my life. Still, my mother called her brother, who was living in London at the time and he agreed to put me up for a couple of days. London was so different from Dublin; more people, bigger buildings, full of hustle and bustle. If it wasn't for the fact that they spoke basically the same language, I think I would have never made it to the clinic where my fellow candidates and I had been told to report.

There is no easy way of determining which people are cut out to be Rangers and those who aren't. Most of the early pilots were already in the military, usually fighter or helicopter pilots. It soon became clear though, that there was a world of difference between being able to fly a plane and pilot a Jaeger. That's why they had opened up recruitment to anyone who might have the potential. The first day was a brutal series of physical and mental tests, to see if my mind and body could hold up under the strain of piloting a Jaeger. They'd hook you up to a room full of computers and medical equipment, they'd have you run a marathon on a treadmill, or solve a Rubik Cube while they spun you every which way they could in a gyroscope.

During the final stages of testing, candidates were placed in a sensory deprivation tank overnight, before having psychiatrists try to pick their minds apart, bit by bit. It wasn't fun, but then it wasn't meant to be. They were selecting people who would be on the front line of the war against the Kaiju. They needed to make sure that we wouldn't break under the pressure of the Drift, or the stress of combat, that we could remain focused and alert while the world collapsed all around us, because that was exactly what was happening back then. I passed the tests, as much to my own surprise as anything and was invited to enlist with the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.

I should have taken the time they offered me, before making my decision. I should have phoned my family and asked what they thought. I should have done a lot of things, but I've always been a little too impulsive for my own good and I signed up then and there. It wasn't until I got back to my uncle's flat that I though to call my parents and tell them what I had done. They were unhappy, to say the very least and told me that if I didn't find a way out of the contract, then I shouldn't bother going home.

Two days later, I left for the newly-built Ranger Academy on Kodiak Island, with little more than the clothes I was wearing.

The first thing they did was run a full scan of my brain, working out the particulars of how I thought and reacted to various sensory inputs and situations. Everyone went through it, even those of us who had arrived with a copilot candidate. While it's true that the best pilot combinations are often found in people who have a close, pre-existing relationship, that isn't always the case and even relative strangers can pilot together, if their minds sync up right. That's how I met Amélie Jeunet, a former lab assistant, working for one of the French sub-contractors on the Jaeger construction program and one of the quietest, most introverted people I've ever met. I was more than a little surprised when I was told that we had scored highly on Drift compatibility and that they wanted us to try it for real. She spoke very little English and I didn't know a word of French, but they insisted that, in the Drift, it wouldn't matter.

Drifting for the first time is a lot like losing your virginity all over again. You're vulnerable, open to someone like never before. There are no secrets in the Drift, nothing but total and complete honesty. A lot of people can't handle that and wash out then and there. I was a little worried that I'd be one of them and I know Amélie felt the same, but we were there because we were willing to take a risk and see if we had what it took to become Titans. It turned out they were right about the language barrier not mattering; once you're in the Drift, there are no words, because you don't need them. You simply know what the other person is thinking and they you. Mission Control likes pilots to keep up a running commentary, but it's often easy to slip into the silence of the Drift. Once they knew we could Drift well enough to pilot a Jaeger, they really got to work.

They'd just opened the first Kwoon Combat Room in a bid to try and work out what style of combat would be best for fighting the Kaiju. Combat-experienced Rangers would come in to the classrooms and give lectures, telling us what had worked and what hadn't against different types, known weaknesses in both the Kaiju and the Jaegers and how best to exploit or guard against them. I hadn't been in a fight for almost ten years, so as you can imagine, I got my ass handed to me six ways from Sunday at first. But that was only half the job the instructors had, because after they found your weaknesses, they set about fixing them, turning you into a living weapon. Jaeger's aren't robots, no matter much they may look like them; they're piloted Mecha that respond to every thought and movement of their human pilots. They tried remote piloting, but there was a unavoidable time-lag that the Kaiju could exploit. And that was another thing they taught us; to never underestimate the Kaiju by thinking that they were nothing but mindless beasts. We may not have known just how smart they were back then, but it was already clear that there was a certain level of animal cunning at work.

In three months I lost four teeth and gained about ten kilos of pure muscle, turning me from a scrawny kid from Dublin to a fully formed Ranger Cadet. Amélie had started to come out of her shell a little, something I've been told has been known to happen when people Drift. She started dating a Canadian guy from admin and I couldn't have been more happy for her. A lot of people assume that when a man and a woman Drift, they're going to end up falling in love...all that enforced openness and intimacy at work. Well, that's bull-crap, at least for the most part. I have three sisters; two my mother gave birth to and Amélie, who became as much a member of my family as my own flesh and blood, or at least in my mind. There are others who came to the academy as part of a couple, or fell in love once they had arrived, but my personal theory is that the seeds of that attraction had to be there in the first place, with the Drift just bringing them to the fore. There may have been a little attraction between the two of us, but I doubt that I would have ever asked her out if we had met under different circumstances.

We spent three years at Kodiak Island, watching as our fellow classmates were slowly whittled away, always waiting for the day when we'd be called into Marshal Pentecost's office and thanked for our time, but told that our services were no longer needed. I lived in fear of that day, knowing that I had burned all my bridges back home and started to push myself harder and harder to prove I had what it took to be a Ranger. It got to the point where I was in danger of getting discharged on mental health grounds, but Amélie managed to talk me down before I blew it for the both of us.

The fourth year saw us begin training on the combat simulator; a full Conn-Pod assembly, mounted on a series of gimbals and hydraulic supports that could simulate the full range of motion a real Jaeger would go through in combat. It was like playing the world biggest and most expensive video game and I had to keep my mind from treating it as such. This was the final test, a pass/fail scenario to see if you'd managed to take in everything they had spent four years trying to cram into your head. You'd emerge from that final year as a Ranger, or as a washout who just wasn't quite good enough. The cut-off point was 95%; any less and no-one in their right mind would even consider handing you controls of a multi-billion dollar walking nuclear reactor and sending you off to fight monsters. We both scored 96%, hardly top of the class, but enough to see us graduated as full Rangers in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. A week later, once we'd recovered from the inevitable hangover, they sent us down to Lima to meet our Jaeger.

One of the first Mark-3's built, _Slow Thunder_ was basically humanoid in shape, but with massive rocket launchers on each shoulder that gave it a hunchbacked appearance. He (and it was most definitely a he), was a big, slow brawler built to go toe-to-toe with a Kaiju and punch their face in. He was ugly as sin and handled like a drunken elephant, but to me he was everything I had dreamed about since I first saw _Brawler Yukon_ in action. Piloting a real Jaeger, not a simulation, was as world-changing an experience as Drifting for the first time. The simulations have never been able to replicate the actual sensation of two thousand tons of metal moving in sync with your own body. The neural handshake lets you feel every move the Jaeger makes, creating a duality where you're aware of your own body, but also that of the Jaeger, superimposed over it. It takes a little getting used to, let me tell you, but in the end it becomes as comfortable as wearing an old, familiar coat.

_Slow Thunder_ was declared combat-operational in September 2017, a little over four years after K-Day. They kept us down in Lima at first, then moved us up to Panama City. That's where we saw our first combat drop, when a big Category-II named _Bonefist_ decided to head straight towards Panama City itself. We were deployed along with _Puma Real_ to stop the Kaiju from reaching the city and the canal. Being dropped on the Miracle Mile by the _Jumphawks_ for the first time, then seeing my first, live Kaiju...well, let's just say I was glad that Drive suits come with what is tactfully called a 'waste removal system', because I certainly made use of mine. We hit _Bonefist_ with our rockets, getting his attention and drawing him away from the city, then _Puma Real_ struck him from behind. I'll give the Mendoza brothers their due; they fought like lions, holding the Kaiju at bay while we slowly moved in. We worked to double-team him, one Jaeger getting his attention while the other manoeuvred into position to hit him when he wasn't looking. He out-massed either of us on our own, but together we were more than a match for it. It was far more of a brawl than anything we'd practised in the Kwoon, but one thing they'd taught us was to be adaptable.

Officially, _Puma Real_ was credited with the kill, which grated on us somewhat. Rangers are, by nature, competitive, and everyone wants to get the credit for another Kaiju killed, another city saved.

It was the beginning of the Good Years, the time when it seemed like we had finally found a counter to the Kaiju threat. Every time the sensors around the Breach detected an emergence, Strike Groups were deployed to face them head on. Fewer civilians were killed, less Kaiju Blue tainted the ecosystems, fewer cities were reduced to rubble. People started seeing the Kaiju as just another natural disaster that humanity had developed a defence for, even when more and more Category-III's and the first of the Category-IV's started to show up. Rangers became 21st century knights in shining armour, riding forth in their Jaegers to battle mighty dragons and the public adored us for it.

If only we'd known what was coming, we might have been a little more humble, a little less complacent. Amélie fell pregnant in December 2019, her relationship with the Canadian admin guy having survived long periods of separation as we were moved around the world from Shatterdome to Shatterdome. They pulled us from the piloting roster immediately, something I know Amélie felt guilty about, no matter how many times I assured her I was happy for her. There was always a surplus of Rangers; as hard as it is to find and train people who have what it takes, it's even harder and more time-consuming to design and construct Jaegers, so _Slow Thunder_ was handed off to another crew and shipped out to Tokyo. They sent me back to Kodiak Island as an instructor and I was there when _Knifehead_ emerged and battled _Gipsy Danger_, killing Yancy Becket. I knew him in passing, but we weren't exactly friends, yet the death of a fellow Ranger is something all of us feel.

I could understand why Raleigh quit; I probably would have done the same if anything had happened to Amélie.

The Good Years ended. The Kaiju were emerging more frequently, growing more powerful and working out how to take down Jaegers by targeting their pilots. I could see it in the faces of my students; anticipation turning to dread with each passing defeat. We were still holding the line, just, but the Kaiju were starting to push us back. Governments, as they tend to do in these situations, panicked and decided protective walls would be a better solution: no more new Jaegers would be built and the remaining cadets were dismissed en masse.

Then came the news that _Slow Thunder_ had been lost off Hawaii, along with both his new pilots. I travelled down to Oblivion Bay to be there when they brought the remains in and it felt like I'd been stabbed in the heart; the once proud Jaeger that had protected me as I protected others, reduced to so much radioactive scrap. The Conn-Pod had been ripped clean away, taking one of the rocket launchers with it, while the left leg ended in a ragged stump just below the knee. Even though I hadn't Drifted in almost a year, I somehow felt the pain as a physical force in my own body, causing me to double over against one of the recovery vehicles, as though I'd been punched in the gut. A pair of security guards had to help me to the medical facility, where the docs checked me over.

Some call it Drift Hangover: something left over from your time in the mind meld. It can manifest as a deep connection with your co-pilot, an ability to finish each others' sentences, or as something closer to phantom limb syndrome, where you continue to feel the Jaeger long after you disconnect from the Conn-Pod. I've know maintenance crews who insisted that they saw Jaegers move and shift in their bays as if they were sleeping. I don't know what the truth is, just that we've gone beyond the edge of our knowledge with the Pons, into something we still don't fully understand. Just where this will take us remains to be seen.

I was given six weeks' medical leave and told to get my head straight, while they decided what to do with me. I went first to Vancouver, where Amélie has just given birth to her daughter, Yvette. It felt good, reassuring, to see that life was continuing in the face of Armageddon. I spent some time looking around the city, visiting the site where _Brawler Yukon_ had taken down _Karloff_ and the memorial that had been built to commemorate our first true victory in the Kaiju War. I was just killing time, until Amélie, knowing me better than anyone else ever could, told me it was time to go home.

For someone who was willing to strap themselves into a live nuclear reactor and do battle with creatures from another dimension, the thought of going home to Dublin terrified me. I hadn't spoken to my parents since I'd signed up with the PPDF and hadn't seen them since I left for London. What little communication I had with home had been brief phone-calls or emails with my sisters, but somehow I found myself on a plane headed back to Dublin, my Ranger uniform making me stand out amid the other passengers. A lot of people were headed to the supposed safety of Europe and Africa those days, getting as far away from the Pacific and the Kaiju as they could. It was short-sighted, panic fuelled and ultimately pointless, but I could understand why they felt the need to run.

Hell, any truly sane person would run from the Kaiju, which says a lot about those of us who have chosen to run straight at them for a living. Dublin hadn't changed much since I'd been away. There were a few new buildings, new graffiti that included stylised Kaiju and Jaegers. It was odd to be so far away from the war, to a part of the world that hadn't been as directly effected. Europe was where a lot of the R&D and manufacturing had been carried out for the Jaegers, safely removed from the front lines. Shipping the components to the Shatterdomes for final assembly had become a industry in itself and a lot of people had been put out of work by the decision to suspend construction of any more, in favour of the Anti-Kaiju Walls. Some people claimed that it would only be a matter of time before we had to build walls along every coastline, consigning the seas and oceans of the world to the Kaiju in the hope that they'd leave us alone, huddled behind our redoubts.

I never understood that, no Ranger did, but they never asked what we thought.

Dublin may have been where I was born, but it wasn't home, not any more. Too much anger had built up over too many years, to the point where it was simply easier to be angry than to try and make peace. Hardly the first time that's happened in Ireland. My parents were distant, cold, treating my arrival less like the return of the Prodigal Son and more like an inconvenience that was to be endured for as long as it lasted. My sisters were more welcoming, but found themselves caught between two sides in an undeclared Cold War. Despite all that, Amélie was right when she told me I needed to go home. Living in utilitarian Ranger quarters in a Shatterdome, when we weren't strapped into a Conn-Pod, it was easy to forget why we were fighting. We all needed to remember why we had dedicated our lives to the PPDC. Nevertheless, I didn't stay home for long. I found a cheap hotel and kept my distance. When I ventured out, it was in civilian clothes, in a bid to just blend into the crowd. It wasn't easy, given how Rangers were treated like rock stars back in the early days. I'd just find some little bar or pub I liked, get settled down with a drink, when someone would recognise me as the home-town hero of the Kaiju War. There was never any anger or hostility in their faces, more pride and adoration, but that wasn't what I was looking for.

No, Dublin wasn't home any more and after a week, I booked a flight back to Kodiak Island.

I was surprised to find Amélie there waiting for me, as she was still supposed to be on maternity leave. It turned out I had left just hours before I was going to be recalled anyway. We did the usual stuff, made small talk, re-kindled our friendship and spent time touring the island, while speculating on what we had been recalled for. In due course we were summoned by Marshal Pentecost, who laid down the cold, hard facts of the matter. With the PPDC's operational budget cut to the bare bones, there was no way they'd be able to replace _Slow Thunder_ with a new Jaeger. My first thought was that we were about to be handed our notice, but then he said something that surprised us both. Out of desperation and necessity, a previously mothballed Mark-3 was being reactivated and would need a crew. There were other pilots, some better qualified and with more experience, but we represented the only unassigned pair of pilots with a proven ability to Drift together. If we wanted it, the slot was ours.

I didn't have to look at Amélie to know what she was thinking. Piloting a Jaeger was the first thing she'd done that she was truly good at, rather than simply adequate. It had brought her out of her shell and filled her with the confidence that only piloting a massive avatar of death and destruction can bring. She also still felt guilty about the fact that I had been grounded when she became pregnant with Yvette and she knew just how much I wanted to get back into a Drivesuit. She felt the same pull and we both accepted the Marshal's offer without hesitation. In retrospect, we should have asked exactly which of the few Jaegers to be pulled from combat, without being suffering irreparable damage, they wanted us to pilot.

_Rhapsody Red_, a name spoken of in hushed tones by Rangers and maintenance crews alike. She killed her first crew with a failure in the environmental controls while undergoing shakedown, fresh out of the factory in Australia. Next, one maintenance tech was killed and two crippled when her retractable 'Sting-Blades' suddenly dropped down while they were replacing lubricant oil in her hips. There were other, less deadly accidents and incidents that had earned her a bad reputation, to the point where she was passed from Shatterdome to Shatterdome and crew to crew, trying to find someone willing to work with her. The last straw had been when, in the mist of battle with a medium sized Category-III, a freak electrical short had turned the entire Conn-Pod into a massive conductor, frying the pilots in their Drivesuits. Dead in the water, she'd been knocked down by the Kaiju she had been fighting, which went on to rip into Seattle before _Striker Eureka_ and _Romeo Blue_ had arrived and put it down. After that, no-one in the PPDC wanted anything to do with _Rhapsody Red_ and she was sent to Kodiak Island for storage. They didn't even consider breaking her down for parts, less they taint another machine with her "curse". But now _Rhapsody Red_ was the only way Amélie and I were ever going to pilot a Jaeger again.

In any event, we didn't have much choice. The tide of war had turned against us and if we wanted a part in the stand against the Kaiju menace, _Rhapsody Red_ was our only way in. Marshal Pentecost shook our hands in a way that reminded me of those scenes in old war movies, where you know that someone's not coming back, before handing us orders for Australia. Amélie was given a couple of days to see her family in Vancouver, then we were on a PPDC transport headed south. _Rhapsody Red_ was already in Sydney, getting refurbished in the Shatterdome. I've never seen such a jumpy maintenance crew and that's counting those who worked around napalm for a living. They kept their distance from us, treating us like dead pilots walking, as we got ready in the Drivesuit Room and entered the Conn-Pod for the first time. Every Jaeger looks and feels different and where as _Slow Thunder_ had had a stark, utilitarian feel to it, it was clear that the team behind _Rhapsody Red_ had taken the time to try and make it feel a little less cold. Not that it made us feel any better, being in a room that had claimed the lives of four of our fellow Ranger, strapped into the very support rigs we were about to mount.

I gave Amélie one more chance to pull out, making it clear that I wouldn't blame her if she did, given she had a family to worry about. While my trip to Dublin had made it clear that the PPDC was the only place I truly belonged, she had a life outside the service, which many would see as more important.

She just smiled at me and climbed up into her harness, ready to see it through to the end. Not wanting to be outdone, I likewise climbed into my own harness and started to activate the clamps that would hold us in place. I could feel the start of the neural handshake, that sensation of someone pouring liquid ice into your brain. I've been told that each Jaeger feels different and _Rhapsody Red_ certainly felt different to _Slow Thunder_. She felt eager, like a racehorse champing at the bit at the starting line, just waiting to be unleashed. This was fitting, given how she was built for speed and manoeuvrability, with a pair of twin retractable Assault Mount 3.25 'Sting-Blades', laced with carbon nanotubes that channel thermal energy at temperatures over three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, wounding and cauterizing Kaiju in close combat. This was backed up by a single ballistic mortar cannon, mounted over the right shoulder for long-range combat. Unfortunately, her speed, manoeuvrability and armament came at the cost of armour, leaving her vulnerable, should a Kaiju get a grip on her.

Well, she didn't try and kill us there and then, or during the following week, as we worked her up to combat readiness. People started to act as though the curse had been broken and the pair of us began to feel that, perhaps _Rhapsody Red_ wasn't the albatross round our necks we had feared. Then came the call to deploy to French Polynesia.

As I said before, the primary Strike Group was down, leaving it to the backup team to take the field. _Titan Avenger_ was our big hitter, a later model Mark-4 geared towards long-range combat, with twin plasma cannons and a hatchet, piloted by American Kirk Blaine and the only Austrian Ranger in the entire PPDC, Zoë Ziegler. Next was our fellow Mark-3, _Centurion Maximus_, piloted by the Boccia brothers, Gaius and Julius, a pair who loved to live up to the wild, womanising Italian stereotype. They were geared for close range combat, with a massive diamond-edged sword in their right hand, and a reinforced shield, made of heavy armour plating, on the left forearm, giving them the look of their namesake. Then there were Amélie and I in the almost effeminate _Rhapsody Red_, sitting somewhere in the middle.

Mission Control deployed us to cover as wide an area as possible, while they waited for _Snapjaw_ to get closer. _Jumphawks_ were on standby, ready to reposition us at a moment's notice. We had to stay Drifting the entire time, something I had never experienced before. Prolonged neural handshakes are avoided, if possible, due to the physiological and psychological strain it puts on the pilots. I hear that the record was 18-hours, set by some crazy Russian couple, but most pilots start to show signs of stress after four, five at most. This can be a problem on long-range deployments, when it can take hours for a Strike Group to get into position. Fortunately, transportation tends to be a lot less stressful than combat, provided you don't find yourself flying through the edge of a Cyclone, as we did once in _Slow Thunder_. Even so, we were all starting to feel the strain when we finally landed on our designated islands, ours being Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands.

We were on the ground for little over an hour, before we got word that _Snapjaw_ had been sighted, heading for Tahiti and that _Titan Avenger_ was moving to intercept. The _Jumphawks_ quickly took to the air once more, carrying us south-west as fast as they could. I could feel a mixture of excitement and fear radiating from Amélie across the Drift: it had been the better part of 18-months since we had last gone into combat and she now had a baby daughter waiting for her at home. I worked to help her put those fears behind her and concentrate on the fight before us. It's dangerous to latch on to a memory while Drifting, as it can easily overwhelm you, distracting you at a critical moment.

Crossing the last line of hills, we got our first good look at Snapjaw. It looked like the bastard offspring of a werewolf and an alligator. The bulk of its body had an unmistakably lycanthropic feel, while its long jaw was filled with row after row of razor sharp teeth. We could do little but watch as it snapped at _Titan Avenger_, keeping the Jaeger on the back-foot. For their part, Blaine and Ziegler struck back with their hatchet, seeking some weak point in the Kaiju's thick, armour-like skin. It countered with slashes from its claws, tearing deep gashes in the Jaeger's armour but failing to penetrate. The _Jumphawks_ dropped us a couple of miles out, then pulled back to provide a birds-eye view for our HUD and those watching from LOCCENT Mission Control back in Sydney. We instinctively widened our stance, bringing the mortar on-line and lining up a shot. _Titan Avenger_ managed to get clear and we unleashed our opening barrage, straddling _Snapjaw_ without doing any noticeable damage. What we did do was get its attention, allowing _Titan Avenger_ to start pulling back until it could deploy its plasma cannons.

The ground beneath our feet shook as _Snapjaw_ charged at us, 2,700-tons of bestial fury and murderous intent bearing down on barely 1,800-tons of Jaeger. We waited until the last possible moment, then feinted left before dodging right, deploying our Sting-Blades as we went to slash at him. We only nicked him, but if anything, it only served to enrage him further and he turned around to charge again. Glancing at the HUD, we worked to move around so that we could start to lead him back towards the coast, away from any civilians who hadn't evacuated. Twice more _Snapjaw_ charged at us and twice more we deftly moved out of the way at the last moment, drawing him ever closer to the sea.

A garbled yelled over the radio from Blaine was all the warning we got, before twin plasma bolts shot through the air, one hitting _Snapjaw_ in the chest, the other missing and vaporising a small office building. The Kaiju barely even seemed to notice, tackling us while we were still seeing spots in front of our eyes and pushing us back into an apartment building. It half collapsed under our combined weight, clogging the mortar tube with debris and rendering it useless. Pushing with both our arms, we held it back while it tried to snap at our Conn-Pod with its massive jaws. Reacting purely on instinct, I kicked out with my right leg, _Rhapsody Red_ mimicking the move to catch _Snapjaw_ where the crotch would have been on a human. I had no idea if Kaiju anatomy was anything like humans' in that regard - I had a tendency to fall asleep during those lectures, but sometimes you've got to go with what you know best. If it worked on Jimmy Johnson in the playground of St Mary's High School, then who was to say that it wouldn't work on a Kaiju in Tahiti?

Fortunately, it did work, though probably not for the reason I thought and _Snapjaw_ staggered back, roaring in pain. _Titan Avenger_ unleashed another, better aimed broadside of plasma, cutting a deep gash on the Kaiju's left shoulder, just as _Centurion Maximus_ was dropped into the fray. Charging in like an enraged bull, the Boccia brothers swung their sword wide, missing the creature's neck by a few scant meters. _Snapjaw_ responded by swinging his head down low, knocking them over while they were still off balance, sending them crashing to the ground. Amélie unleashed an banshee-like cry as we pulled ourselves out of the ruined building and leapt at the distracted Kaiju's back, stabbing away madly with _Rhapsody's_ right Sting-Blade as the left arm sought purchase around its neck. _Snapjaw_ shrugged us off like a bear beset by wolves, sending us flying back the way we had come, into the apartment building that now fully collapsed around us. Now free from our interference, the Kaiju turned to face _Centurion Maximus_ as it struggled to rise, forcing _Titan Avenger_ to close in and attack with their hatchet once more. I watched the fight unfold as we struggled to free ourselves from the rubble that surrounded us, several key systems starting to show damage. Thinking quickly, Amélie ejected the remaining ammunition for our useless mortar and flung it at _Snapjaw_. The canister exploded on impact, the force of the blast staggering the Kaiju, giving _Centurion Maximus_ the time they needed to get back on their feet.

Unfortunately, the beast was far from out of the fight, and it countered by grabbing _Titan Avenger's_ left arm with its massive jaw and bighting down as hard as it could, disabling one of the plasma cannons as it did so. I could well imagine just how much that would hurt Blaine or Ziegler, depending on who was responsible for that limb. As it was, I felt like I had sprained my left ankle where a servo was slightly out of joint, hobbling us somewhat. Fortunately, while _Snapjaw_ was busy chewing on _Titan Avenger_ like a dog with a bone, _Centurion Maximus_ had got back into the fight. Bringing its sword down as hard as it could with both hands, it stabbed the Kaiju in the right thigh. The sword passed clean through skin, muscle and presumably bone, emerging from the other side in a shower of blue blood. Two things that were drummed into our heads at the academy were, first, minimise collateral damage and second, limit the spread of Kaiju Blue, the highly toxic blood of the creatures we were sent to fight. They did all that, then they gave us explosive and edged weapons.

No one ever said Mission Control made perfect sense.

If _Snapjaw_ had been angry before, now he was well and truly pissed-off. He grabbed the sword and pulled it free, unleashing a scream of rage and pain that shattered windows and even cracked our canopy. Then, with a slash of its whip like tail, it knocked _Centurion Maximus_ to the ground, before stabbing it clean through the left shoulder with its own weapon. Amélie and I stood, stunned, unable to act; no one had ever seen a Kaiju manipulate a weapon, or even improvise one. Yet _Snapjaw_ not only turned the sword on its owner, but used it to pin the Jaeger to the ground, driving the point deep into the road. _Titan Avenger_ was likewise frozen in shock, allowing _Snapjaw_ the opportunity to turn upon us and charge.

Even up in the Conn-Pod, I could feel the ground shake with every step the enraged Kaiju took and it snapped me out of my daze. But not quickly enough, and _Snapjaw_ tackled _Rhapsody Red_ around the waist like a rugby player, lifting her clean off her feet and carrying us out of the city, back towards the shore. I felt a stab of excruciating pain in my abdomen, but looked down to see nothing wrong. Then I felt the Drift start to fade, Amélie slipping away from me, and I looked across to see a broken support strut had speared clean through the armour of her Drivesuit. Blood was already trickling out, the automated systems intended to put pressure on any such injury failing to respond. I wanted to help her, but I could feel the right side of my body go numb, a side effect of sudden Drift failure. To the best of my knowledge, only two Rangers have ever managed to pilot a Jaeger solo under any circumstances; Stacker Pentecost and Raleigh Becket. God only knows what it was about them that let them not only survive what should had killed, but continue to see the mission through. Whatever it is, I don't have it. I could feel _Rhapsody Red_ start to shut down around me as the Drift started to fragmented as Amélie lost consciousness, bleeding to death just out of arms reach.

Rhapsody Red looked set to claim another victim.

Something they made clear from day one at Kodiak Island was that, despite all the time, effort and money that went into building Jaegers and training Rangers, we were all ultimately expendable if it meant stopping a Kaiju from destroying a city. That's why early Jaegers all had a self-destruct system built in that would send their reactor critical. If all else failed, we could become a walking bomb, and take them out that way. The Mark-4's were the first to be built with a more efficient and advanced plasma-based power core, after it was decided that the decision to nuke a Kaiju should be taken out of a Ranger's hands. But the option was still there in the older models.

If I had thought for a moment that I could have reached the controls for the self-destruct, I would have activated it then and there and blown _Snapjaw_ straight back to whatever hell had spawned him. But there was no way I'd have been able to disengage my harness and make it to the controls at the back of the Conn-Pod, without getting thrown head-first into something even more stubborn than I was. Hell, I couldn't even reach the button that would have ejected Amélie, for all the good it would have done with a major structural component embedded in her abdomen. My entire right side was numb, a sympathetic reaction caused by the Drift being cut suddenly and unexpectedly.

All I could do was move _Rhapsody's_ left arm, so that's exactly what I did.

I put all my rage, my fear, my stubbornness, everything that was left in me into the gauntlet that covered my left hand and struck out as hard and as fast as I could. There was no way to bring the Sting Blade into play due to the angles involved, so instead I let _Rhapsody's_ massive metal fist and forearm do what damage they could. I unleashed a torrent of curses in English, before moving on to what little Gaelic and French I knew, screaming until my throat felt red raw. I have no idea if _Snapjaw_ could hear me, or if it would have mattered if he could. What's more, I didn't care by that point. I was Captain Ahab, lashed to his Great White Whale, stabbing it with what I thought were my dying breaths. Through what remnant of the Drift that remained, I felt _Rhapsody's_ hand grab something soft and yielding, so I clenched my fist as tightly as I could and pulled hard. There was a moment of resistance, then something gave, the massive arm pulling away so hard and fast that it felt as if my shoulder had been dislocated. Everything went sideways and I found myself floating in zero gravity for a moment, before the ground rushed up to kick me square in the back. The few remaining lights in the Conn-Pod died, plunging me into darkness as a wave of seawater washed over me.

Somehow, the Kaiju had learned that the key to taking down the armoured monstrosity that was a Jaeger, lay in the soft, vulnerable little bag of meat and blood in the head and had started targeting them directly. Many Rangers had been killed through deliberate drowning or having the Conn-Pod breached or just crushed by a Kaiju. Rhapsody Red was now little more than 1,800-tons of useless scrap metal and composites and I couldn't tell if Amélie was dead or just dying beside me. The entire universe seemed to shake, fresh torrents of water washing over me as everything faded to black.

When I came to, I was surprised to find myself lying in a hospital bed, rather than standing before the pearly gates. Kirk Blaine was sat beside me and God bless him, he instinctively knew what was going to be the first question from my lips, before I'd had a chance to even try and articulate it. Amélie was alive, but barely. The strut that had impaled her had partly severed her spine and they'd had to perform an emergency hysterectomy to stop her bleeding out. I guess next to losing the ability to walk or have any more children, the loss of her right kidney was almost not worth mentioning. She was far from out of the woods, but a top PPDC medical team was already on its way from Sydney to take over from the overstretched medical staff at the only remaining hospital in Pape'ete.

He then went on to explain what had happened. It seemed that my random, flailing attack on _Snapjaw_ had managed to gouge out his right eye, creating a blind-spot that _Titan Avenger_ had made use of to get close. Grabbing him by the scruff of the neck while he tried to finish off _Rhapsody Red_, they fired one of their plasma cannons into the wound at near point-blank range, bypassing the thick cranial plate and burning a hole straight through it's brain. The second shot was the coup de grâce that finished the Kaiju off and it had collapsed on top of _Rhapsody Red_. With all the feeds to the Conn-Pod lost, they had though us dead until a Search and Rescue team managed to cut their way in and find us lying in our harnesses, only inches above the waterline. My own injuries had been relatively minor; the luck of the Irish, you might say, but I was still suffering from a combination of shock, dehydration, hypothermia and a nasty concussion.

The Boccia brothers were fine and it looked like _Centurion Maximus_ was in good enough shape to be patched up and put back into service, one they found a way to reattach its left arm. _Titan Avenger_ had only suffered minimal damage and was already being flown back to the Sydney Shatterdome for repair and rearmament. But _Rhapsody Red_ had seen her last battle; the damage done by _Snapjaw_, both during the battle and after it had fallen on her, was just too catastrophic. Several key structural components were broken or weakened to the point of imminent failure and it would have been cheaper and easier to simply build a new Jaeger from scratch, if anyone had been ready, willing and able to fund such a task.

The cursed Jaeger that had taken so many lives was bound for Oblivion Bay, to lay beside her fallen brothers and sisters. I'll admit, I felt a sense of loss at the news; somewhere, in the deepest reaches of the Drift, there had been something that was neither Amélie or I. It's not something Rangers like to talk about, especially not with outsiders, but there's something else, something that can only be described as the spirit of the Jaeger, that builds up over time. Maybe its just an echo of all the previous Drifts, or maybe its something more, but you always know its there.

And now, one more unique spark had been extinguished.

Two weeks and several dozen tests later, Marshal Pentecost came to see me in person. There was no way that Amélie was ever going to be fit to pilot a Jaeger again and I was showing signs of neurological damage from trying to pilot _Rhapsody Red_ on my own. He said that there were treatment options, but that the PPDC no longer had the money to fund full rehabilitation, even if there had been another Jaeger for me to pilot. I don't think I'd ever seen him look so old, so tired, in all the years I had served under his command.

He shook my hand and thanked me, for all my years of service and promised to see that I got anywhere I wanted to go, with all the benefits and pension he could force the bean-counters to come up with. I declined the offer and suggested he send the money to Amélie and her family; they'd need it more than I would. I told him it had been an honour and a privilege to serve under him and wished him all the luck in the world with what was to come. I left the Shatterdome two days later, with little more than the clothes on my back, just as when I had arrived at Kodiak Island, all those years before. I was a Ranger without a Jaeger to pilot, a warrior no longer fit for war. I had no real work experience, minimal qualifications and nowhere to call home.

But for me, at least, the Kaiju War was over.

**The End**

_So, my first crack at writing a_ Pacific Rim _story, and it turned out to be a hell of a lot longer and more in-depth then I originally intended. Having seen the film, read the novelization and_ Tales From Year Zero_, and spent a _lot_ of time wondering around the_ Pacific Rim _Wiki, I came to realise that my original idea of a strait up battle scene was just too small scale for the story I felt needed telling. Marcus O'Shea took on a life of his own, at least in my head, and I felt compelled to write the story of a man who'd given everything to the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, only to end up a broken wreck, cast off by a world that had lost the will to fight._ _Amélie Jeunet was less well developed, and served more as a counterpoint to Marcus, someone with whom he had shared many life changing experiences. A romantic relationship between them would have been too predictable, so I decided to avoid that, and give them a closeness of another kind, that of siblings._

_Many aspects of this story were created from whole cloth, but based upon aspects of the expanded universe. I took these ideas and extrapolated on them, developing them in a way that made sense to me, if no one else. I'm sure that many of them will be disproved or otherwise rendered incorrect by later canon works, but right now I did the best I could to create something that felt real and like it could work using what I had. I make no apologises for this._

_I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much (if not more) than I enjoyed writing it. And remember: a vocal fan-base is harder to ignore._


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